Shamanistic Rage

Meet Baruk, a newly rolled Draenei shaman. Note that everything about him is subject to change, including his gender. Everything, that is, except his class.

In other words, I’m thinking about leveling a shaman. I’ve been thinking of leveling a shaman for some time. Actually, I have leveled a horde shaman. He’s a Tauren shaman who is currently sitting at level 55. I leveled him enhancement. This time around, I’m thinking about going elemental and then dual-specing restoration at level 40. But more about that later.

So, why a shaman? Or, more appropriately, why now? It has to do with raiding. I’ve been getting to do a bit of raiding with my guild of late and it is a blast. I’m raiding with Rubeola, my death knight. I raid with her as unholy dps and I am, on average, having success with it. Rubeola’s gear is crap, but even so, I’m managing to hold my own among the other dps in the raid. I feel like I’m making a contribution, which is my primary concern. I’d feel pretty awful if I weren’t contributing.

And yet, last night, I began to question just how much a DK brought to a raid. My understanding is that DKs make excellent tanks, so if I were tanking, it would be quite obvious that I was making an important contribution. But as dps, what am I really contributing? And then, a couple of times during our fights, somebody bemoaned the lack of any shaman in the raid. In one fight, against Patchwerk (yes, we’re noobs just getting started on Naxx), we wiped when he was down to about 5%, and somebody pointed out that if we’d had a shaman, we could have gotten Heroism, and that would have probably made the difference. And then, against Grobbulus, somebody pointed out how useful a cleansing totem would have been.

I have some selfish reasons to want to go shaman as well. First, I really want a class that can heal. I know I like to heal. Healing on Veleni, my paladin, is fun, and I’m keen to try other kinds of healers. But even more selfish is the fact that because there are so few people playing a shaman, at least in my guild, the competition for gear would be greatly reduced. Is that evil?

My original plan was to wait until 3.3 came out, with the new looking-for-dungeon tool, and then try leveling a character (like a shaman) from scratch through a combination of dungeons, questing, and battlegrounds. But now I’ve jumped the gun and created the character. Will I continue leveling my druid until 3.3 comes out? Or, will my curiosity get the better of me and I’ll find myself drifting over to play the shaman? Time will tell.

One problem I’m going to have, if I start leveling the shaman now, is that I’ve got the wrong heirloom items. I’ve purchased cloth items thinking that I could pass them on to my other clothies, (warlock, priest, and maybe even mage). I feel a little odd using cloth with a druid, but cloth on a shaman seems really whacked. On the other hand, in the very early levels, I can’t imagine it will make much difference. Heck, new characters usually don’t even have shoulders, so the heirloom shoulders are just bonus armor. And while the shaman is leveling with cloth, Rubeola and Veleni can be doing AT dailies to earn enough seals to get the chain items. I believe the two armor items are 60 seals each, and Rubeola and Veleni can each earn 7 seals a day with just a very minimum amount of effort. So it would really be less than 10 days (assuming I could get them both working on it at the same time) before I had both items.

As for the dual-spec idea at 40, I’m thinking that that lets me both heal and dps in instances. What I’d really like to do, if I can push myself to do it, is what Pikestaff did with her druid, which was level up primarily by healing instances. Seems like that’s the way to go to really learn how to heal properly. At least in instances. Raid healing is different, of course, but it seems like I’d at least have the mechanics down by that point.

The one thing that concerns me a bit with this plan is the amount of effort I’ve already put into my druid. And, to be honest, I’m having a lot of fun playing the druid. It wouldn’t be unreasonable at all to imagine leveling the druid to 80 and then taking her into raids. Druids are also quite useful in raids. And they can both heal and dps. And, heck, they can even tank, if I wanted to do that (which I don’t think I do).

And yet, I can hear the shaman calling to me…